George and Dragon at ICALondon in Six WeeksICA, LondonRichard Battye, Gregor Muir, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Liliana Sanguino, Beatriz Lopez, Nuno Antunes, Kerie Anne and the George and Dragon Staff are happy to invite you to the exhibition:George and Dragon Public House at ICAfrom Tuesday, September 20 to Sunday, September 25, 2005, 12:00 PM to 7:30 PMOpening Night: Tuesday, September 20, 2005, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PMICA, The Mall, London SW1

Once upon a time, on a Friday 13th back in December 2002, in the midst of thecoldest most obdurate winter to have afflicted London in forty or maybe seventyyears, there appeared a small glowing light at the Shoreditch end of HackneyRoad. Drawing closer, shivering but inquisitive passers-by discovered that theselights were not Christmas decorations, but the tawdry decor of a newly reopenedpub. The George and Dragon's sumptuously low-budget interior - a hospice forkitsch ephemera - beckoned them inside. This eclectic grotto was complementedby an equally disparate clientele that seemed to catalysed a new mood inShoreditch. Within moments it was clear that the George and Dragon public housepromised an intoxicating polysexual future for a community of locals fatigued withOld Street's metamorphosis into a meat-market for Ben Sherman-clad lads on thepull.

The George and Dragon is uniquely a provincial public house in the inner city,albeit one with an exuberant fiesta feel courtesy of its predominantly Latin-American bar staff. Under the visionary fervour of landlord Richard Battye, theGeorge and Dragon has won the hearts and livers of London's fashion and artbohemia, passing international art visitors, and a morass of sweaty queens, tranniesand bears. Great amount of the magic resides in George and Dragon's soundtrack,a compelling roster of Djs programmed by Richard Battye, the most conceptual ofwhich is Prince Nelly, whose Retro Chart Rundown comprises every top 40 singlefrom a given week in the 80s played in meticulous order, accompanied by aninformative commentary. Through events such as Nelly's Countdown, the Georgeand Dragon pays homage to the decade that most shaped the souls and psyches ofits clientele, side-stepping cheap spectacle such as SchoolDisco.com for a moreadult and therapeutic emotional release aroused by Bonnie Tyler.

In Richardette the curly-locked landlord, barman Pablo Leon de la Barra found awilling collaborator for his experimental social programming. First there came24/7's Guacamole Monday, in which selected friends and customers were invitedto bastardise Mexico's most popular canapé. Then came White Cubicle, alsoknown as WC3, a sporadic gallery event taking place in the ladies' loo. Thisproject unequivocally encouraged viewers to re-evaluate conventions of sociallyengagedand site-specific art by bringing a roster of both established and unknownartists into a location already heaving with established and unknown artists.Nearly three years since the pub's inauguration, Richard Battye has achieved hisambition of running an institution that functions as “something between a drop-incentre, a rehab clinic and his teenage bedroom”. The George and Dragon is morethan just a place to consume stingy British shots of vodka during bad weather, it isan anti-essentialist essential in our increasingly corporate capital.

Within the ICA exhibition space, elements and events that form part of the George and Dragon will be displayed and displaced: this is not a recreation of the George and Dragon, it is an abstraction and translation of that that defines the George and Dragon experience.

Please join us for the following events that might happen during the week:

All week:DJ’s as Live Musical Sculptures including among others The Lovely Jonjo, Mrs. Elin Andersen, The Sizzle Sisters, John and Andy The Straight Boys, The Thank You Boys, Johnny Woo, Lady D.I.E., Richard Mortimer, Spanky and Angie, Danilo, Hazel Robinson, Seb Patane, La Viuda and others.Friends as Barmen and Barmaids

Tuesday 20:Opening Night 6:00 PM to 9:00 PMB-Lo’s Coming Home Party which might include Clarita’s Tombola, David’s Copacabana and Total Strip of the HeartJens’ GuacamoleWhite Cubicle Toilet Gallery at ICA presenting the exhibition Deborah Castillo, South American CleanerRocky our star carpenter on the musical decksand Gregor Muir’s MC curator’s talk!

Saturday 24:Lady D.I.E’s Jumble SaleThe Thank You Boys CrecheThe Main Ones (maybe)bring your records and be a DJ with Six Foot Stereo

Sunday 25:Yorkshire Style Sunday Buffetand Country Club

Grand Finale:And to end the week on Sunday 25 at 7:30 PM board the Double Decker going to the original George and Dragon Public House at 2 Hackney Road and join us to celebrate the end of George and Dragon week and the closure of London in Six Easy Steps exhibition.

All this might happen plus special unannounced events, blackouts and non working toilets, just like in the real George!

George and Dragon at 2 Hackney Road will continue open as usual except on Tuesday 20 when we will be closed.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...